No matter what Trump did or didn’t do while in office his first four years or what he says he will or won’t during his next term, January 6th should have been our country’s line in the sand. Everyone in this country should have seen those people pushing their way into the capital building and said, “Nope, that’s too far.” When a person can say they won an election despite all the evidence to the contrary, and you believe them and only them so much you willingly take up arms against fellow citizens, erect a gallows to hang you’re vice president on for not doing something he can’t legally do, and storm your Nation’s capital you’ve allowed that person to have too much power over you. The fact that people were willing to go that far should have been the flashing neon sign to the rest of the country that people have gone beyond merely liking a particular president. They’ve started worshiping the person in a cult-like manner, and people with cult-like fanaticism are dangerous, take extreme actions, don’t use logic to think through their decisions (they merely react), and are blind to plain truths.
I’m not saying you and your candidate can’t disagree with the results of an election. That doesn’t make the candidate a cult leader or you a fanatic. The US allows a person to contest a decision. The candidate can request endless recounts. They can take their claims to every court on the planet. That is their right. They can pursue it for as many years as they want. What they can’t do is refuse to step aside when the day comes for them to leave office, and they still haven’t proven they won. What the candidate can’t do is sit back and watch as their followers take a shit in our Nation’s capital. A person who does that isn’t a leader. A person who lets his followers go to such lengths after all the proof given to him that he was wrong, who would have let his people hang our vice president for not doing something he couldn’t legally do, is a cult leader, bordering on dictator. The candidate can continue to believe he won for the rest of his life. He can gather evidence and still pursue his accusations in court. Still, until his claim has been proven, he should be a good role model to his people, stand nonviolently, stand aside, and graciously allow the system to work as it always had.
Sidenote: If Trump had done this and still sought evidence that he’d won, I, and I’m sure many more people, would have started to take him more seriously. But what he looked like was an elementary school bully goading his “friends” into beating up all the children on the playground because he lost his turn in line for the slide because he was picking on another kid.
Yes, I understand that you feel like an injustice was done, but we are a civilized society with rules. Do the rules always work perfectly? No. When we find kinks or prejudices in the rules, we set out to change them. Sometimes, change is slow, but our country has consistently tried to improve. You do that from the inside. You get more involved with your government from the inside.
I’m not saying that a rebellion is never the way to go. But you and your neighbors weren’t being rounded up in concentration camps and put to death because of your race, political affiliation, religion, etc. You weren’t being hung because of your racist comment about Obama. You weren’t being forced into the military and further forced to raid and pillage other countries just because Americans wanted more land. You weren’t being whipped in fields by people who owned you. Once your nation is that far gone, a violent rebellion might be the only thing that brings about change, but nothing even remotely that heinous happened before January 6th.
The most significant motivation anyone had was they were told the election was stolen. Yet, every allegation was disproven. All of the recounts kept Biden as the winner. The few credible accounts of fraud were perpetuated by Republicans, and none were enough to say the election in any way. You can claim all of this is wrong, and that is your right, but it doesn’t change the fact that he went through the proper channels, different channels, many times and was told the same thing. At that point, if there is a conspiracy against him, it's vast, and storming the capital wouldn’t help or change anything. All the violence made him look more in the wrong than before.
Just an FYI, a way to tell someone is lying or has an agenda is when they have another suggestion and another when one has been disproven. When one theory was debunked, there was another and another and another. That’s a sign the person has nothing and is fishing for anything. The new theory is them trying to save face, and they will keep throwing things out until they get something to stick, but nothing stuck. Instead, pole workers were threatened. Innocent people’s lives were put in endanger, and the gullible went to jail in Trump’s place.
You're easily manipulated and controlled if you can actively threaten, risk jail, or becoming a murderer of a stranger over something you were told. I’ve gotten mad over what people close to me have said about others close to me. I’ve had to stay away from the other party before I got their side of the story. Still, I’ve never threatened a life over something I didn’t have empirical truth over, meaning I have threatened the lives of two people whom I know raped other people I know, but there was without doubt evidence to prove they did what they did. I know I could go to jail or prison if I ever acted on my threat, and I’m okay with that. Again, I had evidence. No one, not even the accused could deny said evidence. If you’re willing to throw your life away for one over an election, knowing there will be another one in four years, and over something that has been disputed by many, then you’re an idiot or an asshole just looking for a reason to be an asshole.
Another possible motivation for January 6th is COVID, when people felt their civil liberties were being infringed upon. However, the most prominent issues people had during COVID-19 occurred during Trump’s reign, so that doesn’t make much sense. Do I agree with everything TRUMP and Biden did during COVID? No. Were they the only leaders making some of those same decisions? No.
Shutting down the country could be seen as taking away freedoms, which could cause a rebellion, but the shutdown happened during Trump, not Biden, so storming the capital on January 6th because of that doesn’t make sense. Do I think we should have shut everything down? No. If more COVID deniers died early on, we might be better off. I say this knowing that I could have very well been one of those first to die. I fall in the high-risk category for simply being overweight. I say it also because I believe our world is overpopulated, and we need a good culling. I’m not saying I want to actively kill people or that I want people to die, but a decrease in population, in my opinion, would help some of the world's problems.
I also don’t think we should have shut down because I believe in free will. I believe any business that wanted to stay open should have, that people who wanted to work should have been able to go to work, and those who wanted to go shopping should have been allowed to. We knew the risks of going out into public. It was our choice to do so or not. The same goes for schools. Parents should have two options: online or in school. That goes for the teachers. I don’t think we should have been kept from our loved ones who were in the hospital or elderly in nursing homes. Do I understand that it wasn’t just about me or my loved ones in those cases, and I would have been exposing the virus to to others? Yes, but we could have found some workarounds if we’d gotten creative.
Before I go further, know that I practice what I preach. I was with my mother-in-law when she died in September of 2022 in a local hospital. I respected the ICU rules, but when she was moved to hospice, I was there with her as much as possible. I even nearly went to jail the night she died because a night guard tried to stop me from going to her room after hours. It was my choice to expose myself to whatever was on her floor. I wasn’t violent about it. Pissy and a little mouthy, of course. I was grieving. However, I told the guard where I was going, that I had permission to be there, and he could take it up with people above him, but I would be with my mother-in-law. There was some back and forth, and he wasn’t happy, and he was just doing his job, but in the end, I was at the hospital until her body was removed from her room.
Side note: Because we were under a global pandemic that we didn’t fully understand, I was also okay with people who didn’t want to put their lives at risk getting unemployment during that time. I think we should also implement it during certain weather events so people feel like they have to risk their lives to ensure they can feed their kids. I’m not an asshole. I don’t care if people get money or assistance, but I don’t. Crime goes down when people feel comfortable and can reliably get food and pay their bills. And during a time when most of the world was shut down, and certain things were hard to get, I’m all for people getting as much help as possible.
Back to possible reasons for a rebellion. The mask mandate could be seen as infringing on a person’s rights, which started under Trump, not Biden. I can understand where the anger and pushback for this came from. However, you have to remember that your rights end where another person’s begins. You’re welcome to put your life at risk, but not others. Also, masks are used in hospitals to help prevent the spread of germs, so it was a natural precaution to take. Did I like them? Nope. I hate wearing the mask. I feel like I can’t breathe, and they fog up my glasses. Yet, I’m an adult. I understand why places require them. I also understand they have a right to require them. It is their business, after all. They can make pretty much any rule they want. The same goes for the government and their buildings and employees. Therefore, if you enter a business requiring them, wear them or go elsewhere. This applies to any business and any rule the company has. Don’t make a scene like a three-year-old. You’re just hurting your credibility as an adult.
Sidenote: I’m saying this as someone who hates the masks and refuses to wear them. However, since I’m an adult, I make sure I know the rules before I go or leave if I discover the rule later. Or I sucked it up if it was necessary, like at the hospital. Showing your ass just shows the world what kind of entitled asshole you are, and it shows you haven’t grown up. People won’t take you seriously or will take you too seriously, and we end up with worse rules or no business.
The mask mandate leads me to the vaccination mandate, which began Biden’s term in September 2021 for federal employees and Medicaid and Medicare-certified healthcare facilities--not the entire country. There was a proposal to force large companies to give their employees specific options concerning the vaccines, but it fell through. Do I believe schools, businesses, and the like should be able to require their students, employees, etc., to have the vaccine? Yes. I think it is their right as an entity in our free country to require whatever they want (though I imagine there are some things, illegal things, they can’t require). Does this mean you are mandated to have the vaccine? No. You have the right not to attend those schools or work at the company. You can even protest the rules. It’s your right. I also believe it’s the right of the other party to change or not change said rule.
Of all the things leading up to January 6th, these are the most significant things I can think of now that could be considered reasons for violent rebellion against our government. The one under Biden was big, but our governing body worked in favor of those who didn’t want a vaccine mandate, so to pull the stunt during his certification makes no sense.
You can go back to election fraud, but to this date, none of the accusations have held water. I can’t say it didn’t happen. I can’t tell you that you are wrong for thinking or feeling like something is wrong. I don’t think my brother’s death was a suicide, and I don’t believe Trump won Georgia and Pennsylvania this year (2024), but I haven’t found any evidence of either gut feeling. I plan on looking into both, and I’ll follow leads, but until something concrete comes along, I have to let things play out. If the 2020 election was rigged, we would have found out by now, but maybe not. If this one was rigged, we’ll find out. It might be too late to instate the proper person, and I don’t know what the protocol is for such thinking, but if nothing else, how it happens can help us stop it from happening again.
If you think the system is broken, help fix it. Don’t try to further destroy it. That only makes it harder to rebuild.
Is this country a Utopia? No. It never has been, and it never will be. Should you be allowed to protest? Yes. Become violent with it, no. Should you be upset that your person didn’t win? Of course. Should you be allowed to force that person into office anyway, especially after all legal resources said he didn’t win? No. Our system doesn’t work that way. And it shouldn’t. That leads to chaos and our empire crumbling. What you do is pay more attention to politics, especially local politics, and you do what you can to change who’s running your city, county, and state. That helps you change who’s running the entire show. However, you have to remember that 334 billion people live in this country. Laws have to ensure every single one of those people’s rights aren’t being violated. Which makes laws tricky. And the only law that genuinely works for everyone is one that every person doesn’t fully support.